Why This Matters

Important

Why study queer cinema with data?

  • Queer stories have existed since early cinema
  • Representation reflects social norms & lived realities
  • Metadata is often incomplete

The Real Challenge: Access


The data exists; but insight is not immediate.

  • The tidyrainbow dataset is openly available
  • It is structured and reproducible
  • But it is distributed as a large spreadsheet-style dataset
  • Exploring trends requires software skills
  • Interactive exploration is not easily accessible

Open data does not automatically mean accessible data.

The Dataset

Data Source

The Solution: From Spreadsheet to Storytelling

Introducing: LGBTQ+ Movies Explorer

  • Reactive Shiny dashboard built in R
  • Filtering across LGBTQ+ terminologies, movie release year…
  • Conversational chatbot for film queries
  • Supports inclusive, community-focused data access
  • Makes 140+ years of queer cinema explorable in seconds

Under the hood

Key Features


  • Explore trends over time
  • Genre & language breakdown
  • Thematic word clouds
  • Rating filters
  • Chatbot assistant for film queries

Live demo moment

Chatbot Feature

  • Ask about a movie
  • Retrieve themes & metadata
  • Lower barrier to exploration
  • Accessible for non-technical users

What We Learn

📊 Representation Trends

  • 📈 Growth over time
  • 🎭 Dramatic storytelling dominates
  • 🌍 English language dominance
  • 📝 Thematic patterns

🛠 Technical Skills

  • Built with golem (modular architecture)
  • Designed and generated project logo in R
  • Integrated chatbot

Why This Matters for RainbowR



🌈 Queer data visibility

🌐 Open-source collaboration

💜 Buddy Scheme: community impact in action

Future Work



🗄️️

Expand dataset

✅

Public deployment

📈

Improve NLP tagging

😊

Add sentiment analysis

Closing Remarks

Data can make queer stories visible.

Thank you 💛

💬 Share your favourite queer film in the chat.
✨ What features would you like to see next?
🌐 Interested in collaborating? Let’s connect!